Directed by Brian Kirk | Written by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb | ▲1/2

Let me start by saying that Emma Thompson is a friggin’ queen. Going back to her movie debut in the Richard Curtis-penned comedy with Jeff Goldblum, The Tall Guy, I’ve been a big fan. As her adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility proved, she’s also a gifted screenwriter, as well as a fantastic comic and dramatic actor. She’s joined on this wintry thriller by Judy Greer, actor and author of I Don’t Know What You Know Me From: My Life as a Co-Star, in a very different kind of role than we’ve seen from her before — she’s the drug-addled villain. This daring casting might be enough to draw you to Dead of Winter. I’d be the first to tell you to go if only it was better.

It’s not hard to see why Emma Thompson would take this on — there’s not a lot of action thriller opportunities for women in their 60s. She’s Barb, a Marge Gunderson-esque lady looking to scatter the ashes of her husband somewhere out on the remote lakes of northern Minnesota (apparently shot in Finland). While she’s out there she comes across a cabin with a couple credited as Purple Lady and Camo Jacket (Greer and Marc Menchaca), and discovers they’ve kidnapped a young woman (Laurel Marsden). Barb, being a good and impressively capable person, tries to save her.

And that’s the crux of it, but within a few minutes the plot holes crack open. You may ask why Barb,  otherwise clever, doesn’t have the smarts to wipe off a message to the kidnapped woman she writes in the moisture with her fingers on an icy window, which tips off the captors right away. If those kinds of flubs were the only issue — we also get a lot of flashbacks to Barb as a younger woman (played by Thompson’s daughter, Gaia Wise) in the courtship to her husband, which stall the film’s forward momentum while offering nothing to enrich it. I won’t spoil the finale for those willing to give this a try, but it slips badly on the implausible and falls through the ice into the patently ludicrous.